In many fields lawyers and judges bemoan the absence of relevant law review articles. Cynics complain that law professors write only for each other, without regard to law as it is practiced on the ground. Admittedly, over the last 30 years, a declining percentage of all law review scholarship is of the traditional, doctrinal variety. But estate and gift taxation is one area in which law professors' writing should be of interest to tax practitioners and vice versa. Seismic changes in the law of trusts and estates have originated in both the field and the academy. To encourage dialogue, this article identifies 10 noteworthy law review articles of 2009 and summarizes their principal arguments.

The main challenge in selecting a defined number of noteworthy articles is that there are so many good ones. To narrow the field, however arbitrarily, I considered only those law review articles that met the following criteria:

the author is a full-time law professor;

the article was published in 2009; and

the article appeared in a student-edited law review.

What follows is not a list of the 10 best estate- and gift-tax-related articles of 2009 (although many likely would appear on such a list). Rather, this is a list of 10 noteworthy law review articles that a broad audience of tax professionals likely will find relevant and thought-provoking.